


Order #10

by Casiosiris294



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 07:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10328759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casiosiris294/pseuds/Casiosiris294
Summary: All Marinette wants is an overpriced cup of frothy espresso goodness to help her power through her next study session. Too bad Marinette's luck is nowhere near as good as Ladybug's.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short drabble piece that I wrote to try my hand at writing for Marinette. This drabble can also be found on my Marinette/Ladybug roleplay blog. Enjoy!

“Order number ten! Who has order number ten?”

“Psst! Marinette! That’s you!” A tiny voice could barely be heard from the opening of Marinette’s purse, unnoticeable unless one knew to listen for it.

“Order ten: one large caramel mocha frappé!” the barista repeated in a firmer voice, clearly about to give up on whoever had ordered the beverage.

“ _Marinette!_ Wake up!”

Tikki’s persistence finally snapped the girl awake, her head shooting up from where she’d been slumped and falling asleep against the pick-up counter. A half-snort half-yelp escaped her before she could form coherent words. “H-huh? What?” It took far longer than it should have for her to remember her surroundings, blue eyes meandering until they landed on the barista’s amused smirk. Realizing she’d been caught her shoulders scrunched up in embarrassment. Suddenly she felt the urge to crawl underneath the nearest table.

“Thanks,” she finally managed, accepting her cup of whipped cream-topped goodness. Still bleary-eyed from her impromptu nap, Marinette trudged her way over to the barista table at the back of the coffee shop. The cramped corridors between tables made her trip twice—though whether that was due to her usual klutziness or sleep deprivation, even she couldn’t say.

Tikki’s soft voice reached her as she set her cup down on the tabletop, removing the lid to add a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg to the top of her whipped cream. “Marinette, you’re exhausted,” said her Kwami, looking up at her with concern. “You’ve got to stop these late-night study sessions!”

“I can’t, Tikki,” Marinette whispered back. “You know I have that big chemistry test at the end of the week. I’ll totally bomb if I don’t study as much as I can, especially after missing so much class lately.” It was no secret that there was nothing Marinette would like more than taking her friend’s advice and going to bed at a decent hour; the thought of getting eight hours of sleep was heavenly after the past few days of studying until after midnight only to wake up an hour before school so she had even more time to study.

She was enough of a walking disaster _without_ running on only five hours of sleep.

Unfortunately for her, it seemed there had been an akuma every day as of late, and missing so much school to take care of Hawk Moth’s villains-of-the-day was taking a serious toll on her grades. Balancing being Ladybug with schoolwork had always been a challenge, but if her grades dropped low enough that her parents felt the need to get involved, she’d really never be able to sneak out to fulfill her superhero duties. As much as Chat Noir liked to brag, she wouldn’t leave her partner to wrangle with akumas alone.

And so, Marinette had only one option left.

Popping the lid back onto her drink, she took a long sip, sighing blissfully at the near instantaneous burst of energy that shot through her veins. Normally she would’ve just made a cup of coffee at home, but when she was _this _level of dead-woman-walking, regular coffee just wouldn’t cut it. If she was going to keep up her study sessions until Friday, she’d need the special brand of liquid sugar combined with caffeine that only specialty coffee shops could provide.__

After another drink she smiled down at Tikki’s big, worried eyes, waving off her concerns as she turned towards the door. “I’ll be fine so long as I keep my energy up. I promise, once this test is over, I’ll sleep for an entire day if that’ll make you happy.”

“You do that on weekends anyway!” the Kwami pointed out, earning a laugh from her chosen—one that was quick to die out as soon as her gaze lifted and caught sight of who was about to enter the shop.

The chime above the door was completely drowned out by Marinette’s horrified yell. Sleepiness entirely forgotten, she bolted behind the barista table faster than she’d moved in days, drawing on a well of boundless energy reserved for panic attacks and the possibility of needing to run for her life (currently a very real possibility lest she burst from mortification).

Peeking out from her barely-qualifiable-as-a-hiding-spot hiding spot, she forced herself to hold in a squeak as she watched Adrien and Nino wander into the shop. The pair looked to be in the middle of an animated conversation, and while on any other day she would have wanted to catch any snippet possible, she could barely hear anything over her own thoughts as they rapidly descended into an inescapable pit of despair.

_‘Adrien is in the coffee shop! Red alert: **Adrien is in the coffee shop!** He’s going to see me in my ratty sweatpants and a smelly t-shirt I’ve worn three nights in a row, and then there’s my bloodshot eyes, and— **did I even brush my hair today?!’**_

Her fingers clutched at her own face in an futile attempt to peel off the layer of grime that had no doubt accumulated after so long of neglecting her personal hygiene. Soon enough her breathing devolved into a distressed whine as the entire universe fell apart around her. The sheer magnitude of her mental breakdown numbed her to Tikki prodding at her side until the Kwami sharply pinched the skin just beneath her elbow, after which Marinette jerked so hard that the only thing that kept her from leaping a foot into the air was a desperate, unconscious need to not be seen in such an unacceptable state by her hopeless crush.

“ _Tikki!_ ” Marinette whimpered her friend’s name through her teeth, as if begging the Kwami to somehow magically rewind time or even cast her into the void of another dimension so long as it meant that she wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of this Earth-shattering situation.

But for all the power she held, even Tikki couldn’t spare her chosen this time.

“Get ahold of yourself, Marinette!” she replied instead, her tone infuriatingly calm in comparison to the girl’s borderline hysteria.

“How can I possibly get ahold of myself when Adrien’s going to see me like _this_?” she whisper-yelled back. Her voice cracked miserably on the last word, and her eyes were frantic. “I look like a homeless person! I haven’t even showered since yesterday!”

“Adrien’s your friend; he doesn’t care how you look!” Tikki tried to reason, ignoring Marinette’s bark of derisive laughter. “Instead of avoiding him, why don’t you go talk to him? Maybe he could help you study so you wouldn’t have to worry about your test anymore.”

“Right. Can you imagine how that conversation would go?”

“It’d go a lot better if you wouldn’t freak out as soon as you see him. Just go say hi!”

Unable to conjure adequate words, Marinette tried to give a wild gesture that indicated just how ridiculous Tikki’s suggestion was, only to bash her elbow into the side of the barista table hard enough that the seasoning shakers rattled atop it. Thankfully a frantic glance revealed the boys too preoccupied with selecting a table to notice.

Her opposite hand rubbed at her aching elbow as she whirled back to her Kwami. “No. _No way_ is this happening right now. I can barely face Adrien on a normal day; I refuse to be seen when I look—and smell!—like I just crawled out of a garbage truck.”

The girl expertly ignored Tikki’s exasperated protests, instead scanning the shop for any means of escape. As her luck would have it, the situation only grew more hopeless as she caught sight of Adrien and Nino plopping their bags on the chairs of a table directly next to the coffee shop’s only entryway. It wasn’t until they both moved to stand in line at the register that she saw her opportunity.

_‘Wait for it, wait for it…’_

Finally Adrien stepped up to order. The second his back was turned, Marinette made a break for it, weaving and leaping between crowded tables in her mad dash for the door. The distance between her and her goal seemed to expand the farther she went. Time slowed to a crawl as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure her cover hadn’t been blown.

In a flurry of flailing limbs Marinette burst out onto the sidewalk, pinwheeling her arms so that she screeched to a stop before plowing into the street. It wasn’t until she’d sprinted a full block away that she allowed herself to stop, hunching over to rest her free hand on her knee as she gasped for breath.

“I made it!” she said victoriously, commending herself for her victory.

“Yeah,” Tikki piped up, “but you spilled half of the drink you went out for in the first place.”

Sapphire eyes bugged. Sure enough, looking at her cup, it was now barely halfway full, rivulets of coffee streaming down the sides and coating her fingers in sticky coldness. Her once proud mountain of whipped cream was now a lopsided blob sunken into the rest of the drink.

Her free hand smacked against her forehead as she groaned. Unfortunately for the teen, what little remained of her dignity wouldn’t let her return to the shop to order another drink, given that the entire rest of the cafe’s clientele had a front-row seat for her getaway. She didn’t even try to hold in a pitiful sigh as she moved to lean back against a nearby lamppost. All she could do was hope she didn’t spill it on anyone’s belongings.

“There goes my energy for tonight,” she lamented, looking dejectedly down at the tiny puddles forming beneath her dripping beverage.

“Just drink what you have left and you can make some coffee at home later if you need it,” came her Kwami’s sage advice, accompanied by a sympathetic pat to her thigh.

Far too consumed with shame to agree, the girl simply sighed before heading towards home.

She barely made it half a dozen steps when a thunderous **CRASH** echoed from the next street over.

Her pigtails whipped against her cheeks as Marinette spun to face the noise, only to be met with the sight of a _car_ flying through the air straight towards her. The people around her screamed and scrambled, but her Ladybug instincts kicked in automatically, and she dove effortlessly out of the way, the car sailing passed her and skidding down the sidewalk, annihilating the lamppost where she previously stood as it went.

Rolling back to her feet, her fierce gaze looked towards the direction the car had come. Screams rose up from between the distant buildings. A lump of horror caught in her throat as she watched more smashed vehicles tumble down adjoining streets and soar into storefronts. Blue eyes swept her surroundings, now frantic for an entirely different reason, before settling on a nearby alleyway.

Studying would have to wait.

Marinette sprinted into the cover of the alley, and a burst of pink light later, Ladybug leapt forth, yoyo hooking on the rafters of the coffee shop to propel her over the line of buildings to the next block where an akumatized monster raged. It tromped down the road, using an enormous parking meter like a golf club to fling cars at fleeing citizens.

Before it could swing it’s weapon again, Marinette threw her yoyo and hooked it around the top of the parking meter, letting out a grunt of effort as she yanked backwards as hard as she could. Thrown off balance, the unsuspecting akuma crashed to the pavement.

“Hey!” Ladybug shouted, drawing it’s furious gaze from the people scurrying to get away. “You know, this is why I always put more than I’ll need in the meter. Getting a ticket is bad enough when you don’t have to deal with a cranky meter maid.”

The monster’s enraged howls rattled in her skull as it staggered to it’s feet. The sun glinted off of the reflective strips on it’s bright orange vest: no doubt that was where the akuma was hiding. Parking meter swinging like a baseball bat, it charged, and Ladybug swung into action.

~

Half an hour and one cleansed akuma later, Marinette trudged back into the coffee shop, even more dead-on-her-feet than before.

She ordered an _extra large_ frappé this time.


End file.
